It does seem the real reason the president didn’t release this sooner was a political one — to try to bait his political adversaries to beat the birther drum and discredit themselves in the process.

Well, Obama got to pose as a martyr for decency and common sense – which of course is his disguise, the disguise that he got elected with in 2008.

I agree that the real story here is (and always has been) media double standards; the media’s refusal to hold Obama to anything resembling the robust disclosure standards that they insist upon, for GOP candidates (and that GOP candidates typically meet).

And I agree that tactically, Obama should have let this issue bubble longer. Now the country can get back to important conversations e.g. about our fiscal crisis. For his own political survival, Obama desperately needs America to NOT have those conversations.

This was a ploy by Mr. Obama to further perpetuate the liberal myth that conservatives are racists. The overwhelming liberal theme on the local newspapers board : the only possible reason to see any of Mr. Obama’s documented history is to discredit a black man. The press let him play (passively) the race card.

The local liberals are so blinded by their own hatred for conservatives, they can’t see their double standard

The overwhelming liberal theme on the local newspapers board : the only possible reason to see any of Mr. Obama’s documented history is to discredit a black man.

Which of course makes no sense when you consider that the same liberals demanded to see John McCain’s birth certificate and Trig Palin’s birth certificate.

That really shows you the depths of the racist hate of individuals like Dooms. They can demand something of a white person all day, yet turn around and scream that demanding the same thing of a black person proves you are a racist and a loon.

What it boils down to is this: Dooms and his fellow racist black people believe that their skin color means that they do not have to follow any sort of rules, laws, or standard decency.

The hilarity of this is that their belief in doing so was created by liberals’ belief that black people and other minority members are inherently inferior and are thus not capable of following the same rules, laws, or standard decency that white people do. The Obama Party is still spouting the same white-supremacy tirades and the need for minority members to serve and obey their white superiors that they have been for years; they’ve just realized that welfare checks and affirmative action are simpler than chains and locked gates.

Why all the mystery and obfuscation over a public document? He should have followed the example of a much more-able leader, the duke of Wellington, “…Publish, and be damned.” the instant this became an issue. Instead Barry Dunham’s partisans have been scurrying around the baseboards sealing medical records, school and university transcripts…even his college papers.

Amazing !!! Our fearless leader has responded more to a reality star than he has to either Paul Ryan or John Boehner on issues that really matter to the nation…….. Celebrity has “trumped” the president of the United States.

If it takes a “reality star” like Trump, to force Obama’s hand to show his birth certificate — just imagine what we’re in store for next. The chick from the “Biggest Loser”? With any luck, she’d get Obama to show his actual plan to reduce the budget.

During the presser, Obama denounced the “sideshows and carnival barkers” that obviously forced him to release the birth certificate in what became a political phenomenon he could no longer ignore, saying, “We do not have time for this kind of silliness. We’ve got better stuff to do. I’ve got better stuff to do. We’ve got big problems to solve.”

Minutes later, remember the press conference was held at 9:45am, in fact it was 10:05am, Obama was in the air bound for Chicago where he will interview with Oprah today. Then it’s off to New York for THREE fund raisers later in the day.

Yeah, well if Oprah really wanted to bust some presidential balls, she’d ask Obama how appearing on her show today, demonstrates he’s serious about solving the problems that face America now. Right???

This is interesting It turns out that, contradicting the president’s statement that the birth certificate story was dominating the news… it actually was only the topic of 4% of news stories from April 11 to 17. Also, MSDNC and CNN were giving the story far more coverage than FoxNews.

From this we may conclude that 1. Obama is a liar and 2. the left-wing networks were pushing the story much harder than FoxNews.

Dooms… not that it matter to you but the birth certificate got its start in 2004 when Barry was running in 2004 for the Senate. It really got legs from – wait for it – Hillary Clinton supporters.

I don’t really care about the issue – we’re stuck with him until 2012. But I don’t see curiosity about the BC issue to be near as strange as the left’s obsession with Trig Palin’s BC (and Trig isn’t running for POTUS). Of course I don’t have the demented mind of a Trig birther like Andrew Sullivan.

Interesting critique, Spartann. . . . All I can say is he hurt himself with this press statement, particularly by speaking out himself. He would have “won” this round had he had his press secretary release it with a simple and maybe even snarky statement.

But now that we see nothing even remotely embarrassing (like maybe he had a different birth name from the name he used when a candidate for office) on the certificate, one wonders why the Democrat withheld it for so long.

if it keeps going on like it has maybe Trump and Obama can Tit for Tat each other into mutual self destruction well before Campaign Summer ’12 and we’d never be forced to look at or hear either one of these bozos again.

In essence, Obama has given a pass to the loony birthers by suggesting this was a legitimate issue deserving of a White House response. And, of course, he’s made Donald Trump into the uber-opponent. Trump, unsurprisingly, is gloating, declaring he’s “proud of himself for accomplishing something no one else has accomplished.” What’s next: Capitulate to his demand to release Obama’s college grades?

That is idiotic.

This metastasized into a legitimate issue because significant numbers of the conservative base believed that President Obama is not an American citizen. This is due in no small part to the blatantly racist streak that permeates modern conservatism, and the completely cowardice of GOP leadership to stand up to its base when it gets too crazy for its own good. This has been a racist ploy and a discredited (and boring) conspiracy theory from the beginning, and it is in now way legitimized by what Obama did today.

What if I were to say that Jennifer Rubin and the GayPatriots are all Nazi-sympathizers who gather in the woods to eat babies they stole from the hospital? Would my point of view be ‘legitimized’ if you took the time to defend yourself from such spurious and absurd accusations?

It’s pretty typical for conservatives to try to turn these kinds of embarrassing, pathetic failures into some kind of subtle victory where you can point out another one of your opponents’ character flaws. But rest assured – this birther stuff has exposed the GOP as a bastion for racists in this country, and no amount of spinning is going to convince the increasingly non-white electorate otherwise.

But before we conservatives rally around the real estate mogul, we should note that the primary reason we’re enjoying the spectacle is because, through his own antics to get attention, Trump has helped further expose the virtual silence of the MSM when questions about Obama come up. If thise New Yorker is serious about running for president, let’s hope when he means what he says about moving on to “much more important matters.”

Wait… what? You’re transforming a rancorous accusation based on completely racist sentiment into…. *ahem*…. ‘questions about Obama’ that ‘come up?’ You want the media to investigate frivolous bullshit that doesn’t make sense? This is why we have a free press?

If the “distraction” provided “carnival barkers” was so troubling to President Obama, it’s not clear why he didn’t release this innocuous document back in 2008, as some columnist recommended way back on June 9 of that year.

Ugh. You… you just, really don’t get it, do you?

That Obama released his birth certificate today isn’t the story. The story is that the conservative movement has been flogging a blatantly racist line of attack against the President that was debunked years ago. To state that this document should have been released years ago demonstrates only that you’ve sympathized all along with the birthers. That kind of attitude is exactly what legitimizes the birthers, in sharp contrast to Rubin’s nonsensical reasoning that they’re legitimized by Obama proving them to be liars and crackpots.

The birthers gained so much traction because people in the GOP leadership and conservatives like the ones on this blog didn’t refute these crazy people and in many cases actively encouraged them. The birther viewpoint was accommodated by the larger conservative movement and subtly promoted by the leadership. Here’s how you reacted:

BIRTHER: Obama is not an American citizen! He is an African and he wants to destroy our country!

CONSERVATIVES LIKE DAN AND JOHN BOEHNER: I think that’s a legitimate concern, and he should release his birth certificate if he has nothing to hide.

That’s being an accommodationist. Here’s how you should have reacted.

BIRTHER: Obama is not an American citizen! He is an African and he wants to destroy our country!

HYPOTHETICAL, INTELLIGENT CONSERVATIVE (EXTINCT IN THE WILD): Jesus, do you know how racist and idiotic you sound? Pipe down with that silly bullshit before someone hears you. You’re gonna make us all look really bad!

Do you see the difference? There was never any reason to suspect that Obama was not a legal citizen of this country, and while you may not have actively flogged the birther stuff as much as others did, you’re still on the complete wrong side of the argument if you think this was a valid point of criticism.

Interesting critique, Spartann. . . . All I can say is he hurt himself with this press statement, particularly by making himself. He would have “won” this round had he had his press secretary release it with a simple and maybe even snarky statement.

Dan, he won this. We know you hate the guy and you’d like to lose all the time (most of the time, he does lost), but this exposes the racist nature that supports at least a portion of Obama’s opposition. I know that it’s impossible for you to imagine Obama as a sympathetic character in any scenario, but this is one of the situations.

Just checking – you do realize that this is a story principally about racism, don’t you?

But now that we see nothing even remotely embarrassing (like maybe he had a different birth name from the name he went by as a candidate for office) on the certificate, one wonders why the Democrat withheld it for so long.

There’s an amendment in the Bill of Rights… something about freedom from unreasonable search and seizure? Nothing in our electoral law compels Obama to show you his birth certificate. There’s nothing that compels you to show me your birth certificate if I started accusing you of being a foreigner. Obama was right not to indulge in this racist witch hunt on principle. You seem to be espousing an attitude that people shouldn’t mind being ogled and investigated if they have nothing to hide, and that’s about as invasive and un-libertarian an attitude as one can have.

Levi, you are aware that in this post, in addition to acknowledging Mr. Trump’s media savvy, I both mock and criticize the real estate mogul?

I was taking issue with your fawning praise of the Jennifer Rubin excerpt. I explained why I thought it was stupid, and my remarks didn’t have anything to do with Donald Trump. Donald Trump is the most irrelevant and uninteresting part of this story, and you’re lying to yourself (and desperately trying to deflect) if you think he has played any kind of pivotal role. The real question is how and why this birth certificate stuff got so much traction among the conservative movement.

Levi, you comment to this blog, but never seem to get my point. I have never thought this was a serious issue, only that the president created an opening for his adversaries by not releasing the certificate sooner.

Yes, you’re right to note I praised Rubin’s comment, largely because of the way she describes Trump’s antics. Note the term she uses to describe him in the passage I quoted above.

Perhaps, to you, Donald Trump is the most irrelevant an uninteresting part of the story, but if you’ve bothered to consider what I’ve been saying rather than just cut and paste selected excerpts and ramble on about something possibly related. I find it amusing that this guy has gotten so much media attention. And I’ve said that more than once.

If you find Mr. Trump uninteresting, fine, just at least, if you’re going to spend so much time on this blog, appreciate that I find him entertaining.

Guess I have to because readers like you spend a lot of time on the blog while showing an incredible indifference to the observations we share.

Levi, you comment to this blog, but never seem to get my point. I have never thought this was a serious issue, only that the president created an opening for his adversaries by not releasing the certificate sooner.

Yes, you’re right to note I praised Rubin’s comment, largely because of the way she describes Trump’s antics. Note the term she uses to describe him in the passage I quoted above.

Perhaps, to you, Donald Trump is the most irrelevant an uninteresting part of the story, but if you’ve bothered to consider what I’ve been saying rather than just cut and paste selected excerpts and ramble on about something possibly related. I find it amusing that this guy has gotten so much media attention. And I’ve said that more than once.

If you find Mr. Trump uninteresting, fine, just at least, if you’re going to spend so much time on this blog, appreciate that I find him entertaining.

Guess I have to because readers like you spend a lot of time on the blog while showing an incredible indifference to the observations we share.

I couldn’t care less about what you think of Donald Trump, so I didn’t comment on it. However, you’ve made other observations in this post and in the comments that I did care about, and so I commented on them. Specifically, your observations that Obama should have released the birth certificate sooner, that Obama hurt himself politically by the way he’s handled this, and your observation that this story is primarily about the media not wanting to investigate Obama’s background.

These are all observations and points that you have made in the past 24 hours, are they not? I’ve made some direct responses to these observations of yours, and you’re accusing me of showing ‘an incredible indifference’ because I don’t want to endlessly prater about opinions of Donald Trump?

HYPOTHETICAL, INTELLIGENT CONSERVATIVE (EXTINCT IN THE WILD): Jesus, do you know how racist and idiotic you sound? Pipe down with that silly bullshit before someone hears you. You’re gonna make us all look really bad!

Levi, we get along you and I…. But you really do need to practice writing dialog to get the voice of the character right. That is not what and intelligent Conservative would say…. It’s what a typical emotions-over-intelligence ruled liberal would say. It shows your basic lack of understanding of the Conservative mind.

The hilarity is watching a proven racist like Levi, who has already acknowledged that black people are stupid and need smart white people like himself to drag them kicking and screaming into the future, try to then accuse other people of racism.

Especially since Birther Levi and a significant portion of the Obama Party base were and still are demanding birth certificates for John McCain and Trig Palin, under the insistence that the former is not eligible to be President and that the latter is…um…well…they don’t know why they need it, but they DEMAND that Sarah Palin release it!

Levi’s meltdown and tantrum here are an excellent sign that Obama looks like a fool, and that his desperate acolytes like Levi are throwing any type of mud they possibly can to protect their precious and idiotic token, even if they expose themselves as complete and total hypocrites in the process.

Obama truly is the gift that keeps on giving for conservatives. After the behavior he provokes from people like Levi, no one here seriously believes that hard-core Obama Party members and “progressives” like Levi are rational beings or operating on anything other than hatred and racism. That’s why Obama’s election and reign have coincided with the sharp fall in support in the polls in virtually every category for the Obama Party/”progressive” point of view.

Seriously, would anyone here hire Levi or put him in charge of a business? He’s an avowed racist. He supports and endorses violence and death threats against people who disagree with them. He demands to be paid regardless of whether he works or not. He demands promotions regardless of whether he deserves them or not. He openly advocates and acknowledges that he practices discrimination against people based on their religious beliefs.

Is it clear to everyone here now why Levi, despite being a self-described super-genius and utterly moral individual, is a failed clerk?

Levi @ #18 really entertains me with all his multiple voices arguing inside of his alleged mind and making his eyes whirl like fruit icons in a slot machine. My favorite dust bunny of his temporal lobe is: HYPOTHETICAL, INTELLIGENT CONSERVATIVE (EXTINCT IN THE WILD) who in his hypothetical, but extinct voice begins: “Jesus … and it goes into total babble from there. I wonder, endlessly, what a hypothetical, but extinct voice sounds like. In fact, does a hypothetical, but extinct character even have a voice box?

If a hypothetical, but extinct tree falls in the forest, does it crush a real time squirrel with leg braces and unable to scamper? Did Levi take his meds or is he doing figment fallout?

Levi, above all others should be able to relate to Trump and the “birthers.” Levi bought the styrofoam columns, the Hope and Change, the fundamental transformation of America, the lowering of the seas, the:

“Happy talk, keep talkin’ happy talk,
Talk about things you’d like to do.
You got to have a dream,
If you don’t have a dream
How you gonna have a dream come true?”

What a card. And I thought he was only two dimensional. Well, I guess one dimension is better than none at all.

Levi, you could start some research by reading a few of Michael Medved’s or Hugh Hewitt’s position on this. Medved’s observations pre-long form are particularly intelligent, noting that President Obama’s mother is documented to be in Hawaii before his birth, and after his birth, and it would have taken extreme effort to fly back and forth, to Kenya and back, during those years in the early 60′s. There was exactly a plane going to Kenya every day from Hawaii. That is the type of intelligent discussion on this topic that has been out there if you care to look beyond the hyper partisan claptrap presented on too many talk radio programs slumming for ratings or forums full of politically insane partisans.

Oh, and those of us who remember the vitriol thrown at Bill and Hillary Clinton…. the attitude is exactly the same as it is toward President Obama, as it was on your side of the fence against President G W Bush and Cheney.

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